


Doodles

by Kuroyukihime



Series: Doodles [1]
Category: SKAM (Italy)
Genre: Birthday, Birthday Presents, Doodles, Edoardo being a dork, M/M, Martino and Eleonora being good friends, Niccolo dropping hints, artist!Elia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 09:03:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20043400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kuroyukihime/pseuds/Kuroyukihime
Summary: Filippo was never into birthdays. Or rather, he was never intohisbirthdays.Spoiler: it changes.





	Doodles

**Author's Note:**

> A fic I once wrote for @azozzoni/silver_etoile for her birthday and I decided to post it here after a few months.
> 
> Based loosely on this thing (https://solo-silenzio.tumblr.com/post/179582869517/from-martinos-ig) which made me believe Elia can draw really well, at least in the cartoonish style, and some ‘different style challenges’ I’ve seen recently.
> 
> Not beta, yet. I'll get to that eventually.

“What’s that?” Asked Filippo, picking up a piece of the paper lying on the floor among Eleonora’s papers. She was doing general cleaning, as she used to do always a few weeks after the end of the school year. She was organizing the notes and other kinds of papers, deciding which ones she wanted to keep because they may be useful in the future, and which were to be thrown away because they’re useless. This year Edoardo was helping her, as he was so called cleaning specialist, or at least he claimed to be.

At first glance, Filippo thought what he had picked up was just a piece of paper full of unimportant doodles. But then he took a closer look and realized these were quite interesting drawings. All of them presented one person but in different styles of drawing. All of them were cartoonish. Some of them he recognized, like Winx Club or Adventure Time, but most of them he didn’t. They were mostly black and white, but he knew precisely who they presented. That hairstyle, that striped shirt, and most importantly – red lips, the only thing in every drawing that was not black and white. It was obviously Eleonora.

“Oh, I completely forgot about it,” he heard over his shoulder, as the person in question studied the sketches. “It’s Elia’s. One time he was waiting for Martino at the radio’s room. He got a bit bored and asked if he can draw me. It was not quite what I expected to see, but I liked it, and he let me keep it.”

“It’s good, actually. But I’d never tell Elia could be an artist.”

“Right? I was surprised myself. But when I asked him, he said it’s just a hobby.”

“Who’s Elia?” Asked Edoardo. He didn’t even look at them from where he was putting the notes Eleonora decided to keep into a binder, but Filippo could hear this minimal jealousy in his voice. Well, it was quite understandable. He probably wasn’t too pleased to hear that some random guy spend some considerable amount of time drawing his girlfriend even if these were just cartoonish sketches.

“Martino’s friend. Oh, please, don’t tell me you don’t recognize him! You saw him multiple times!”

Edoardo frowned, but then suddenly he seemed to match the name with the right face. His girlfriend’s irritation probably speeded up this process.

“Ah, _this_ Elia! Okay, that changes everything.” Eleonora rolled her eyes at that but didn’t say anything.

Filippo was still looking at the drawings. He wasn’t sure why, but he liked them a lot. They were done with a black and red fineliners (Filippo’s guess, and he knew a thing or two about artistic tools) and in a very clear way. There was no single line made with a pencil, everything was put straight on the paper using only the fineliners. Nevertheless, there were almost no mistakes. Well, maybe there were some slight shortcomings here and there, but Filippo had to pay close attention to even notice them. And the longer he was looking, the more fascinated he was. As he counted, there were seven different drawings, and he inspected all of them acutely. He was never a fan of drawings, neither cartoons, but he found these few little figures interesting and funny. He started to be a bit jealous of his own sister having something like that made about her. Elia had surely put some work and consideration into that, even though it was just a thing he did out of boredom.

“Filippo?” Eleonora’s voice brought him back to the reality out of his thoughtfulness. “If you like it so much you can have it.”

“I don’t need a piece of paper full of your face. I have too much of it every day, darling,” he sighed, putting the drawings aside. “I just think it’s nice. I like how it’s done, the style and everything, but also I think it’s quite interesting someone took their time to do something like that for the person he barely knows. You know, gazing at you for long minutes and everything. Are you sure Elia doesn’t have a thing for you?”

“Elia? No way. He was just bored, and we were the only two people in the room, so it’s not like he had a lot of models to choose from,” she said, not even slightly bothered. Edoardo, on the other hand, seemed to be bothered for the both of them.

“I hope so!” He announced from the other side of the room. Eleonora ignored him, focusing on her brother.

“Hey… Is it me, or you look a bit down? Is it about Dario? Maybe you should talk to him after all or…”

“No,” Filippo answered quickly, shaking his head. “Dario is a closed chapter. It doesn’t make sense anyway. He needs someone calmer and more mature, he said it himself. And I need someone who’d be able to keep up with me. Someone more spontaneous, more confident, more… you know.”

“I know,” she claimed. She did. She knew her brother long enough to know what kind of person he needed in his life. And she hoped he’d find this person someday.

Filippo was never into birthdays. Or rather, he was never into _his_ birthdays. It was simply not a big deal. His parents never remembered, and he never fully got over it, so there was this dose of disappointment every year. He was trying to get rid of it by getting his friends, hitting some club and finding someone to spend the night with, but it was never his dreamed birthday. There was no special birthday parties, no singing ‘Happy Birthday’ over the birthday cake with a group of friends, no more than one present, so it was pretty sad.

The only thing that made everything better was the existence of Eleonora. She always remembered, she was singing ‘Happy Birthday’ over the birthday cake or at least suitable replacement of a one, she was coming up with a present. So every and each year Filippo was grateful for having her because he knew without her none of his birthdays would make any sense.

But that year Eleonora outdid herself. Completely.

Filippo came home from a university with a plan of getting together with his friends and going out, and the last thing he expected to see in the living room was Eleonora with Martino and their respective significant others singing ‘Happy Birthday’ in the most unsynchronized way he had ever heard.

“Look what we have for you! And no, you definitely didn’t expect it,” said Martino, as he and Eleonora came up to him with something that was supposed to be Filippo’s present.

It was wrapped in a paper, but judging by the shape, it could be a painting. Or a large photo. Or maybe some framed poster. He looked at Eleonora and Martino suspiciously, but they only hurried him to unpack it, both seemingly impatient. That made Filippo unsure because Eleonora and Martino being excited over the same thing couldn’t end up well.

Fortunately, he was wrong.

After he ripped off the paper, he saw a bunch of drawings drew on a framed bristol board. He quickly realized it was exactly what he saw among Eleonora’s papers some time ago – a bunch of drawings presenting one person in different cartoon styles. Except that there was no seven of them, but probably about twenty. And they were sighed, so he knew which drawing was made in which cartoon’s style. Moreover, no black and white with small additions of red, but colorful, and made with much more care and precision. And they didn’t present Eleonora. They presented _Filippo_.

He carefully studied his own face in multiple cartoonish versions. Winx Club Filippo, Adventure Time Filippo, Simpsons Filippo, Flinstones Filippo, Sailor Moon Filippo… And in the middle of the frame, slightly bigger than every other drawing, was Filippo drew in unsigned style. Probably author’s own style. _Elia’s_ style.

“And? What do you think?” Asked Martino, a hint of uncertainty in his voice. Filippo looked at him quickly before turning his eyes back to the drawings.

“It’s… wow, it’s great, seriously. I love it,” he said finally, his eyes tracing every drawing as if he couldn’t believe it was all him. It was a bit weird to look at his own face like that, but interesting nevertheless. “Did you get Elia to do that?”

“Well… yes. But we were helping.“

“We just provided him with materials and occasionally some ideas,” commented Eleonora making Martino roll his eyes.

"Well, that’s still some kind of help,” he decided with a little shrug.

“I think we actually did him a favor, ” Niccolò cut in, a mischievous look in his eyes. “He seemed to be quite eager to draw you. I’d say he enjoyed it definitely more than…”

“Oh, come on, Nico,” Martino didn’t let him finish, hitting his arm playfully. “The most important thing is that Filo enjoys it. Now let’s get to the cake.” That made Edoardo happy.

“Thank you! I went through a lot of effort to get a cake that has a rainbow both inside and outside. I want to see if it was worth it.”

They all spent the whole afternoon eating and talking, but for some reason, Filippo couldn’t get the author of his birthday present out of his head. He wanted to believe the reason for that was the gratefulness, but the truth was that Niccolò’s words still lingered on the back of his head. He tried to ignore them, but they were coming back to him all the time. Finally, he decided it’s pointless just to sit and think about it and decided to do something about it. He was feeling a bit stupid asking Martino for Elia’s number to ‘thank him for the effort and all,’ but in the end, he got it, so he decided to at least try and see how the conversation will go.

After a third signal, Elia picked up with a simple “hello?” Filippo cleared his throat, suddenly feeling uneasy. He wasn’t even sure why exactly he wanted to call him in the first place. But there was no turning back. It’d be stupid to leave Elia hanging at the other end. Nobody liked dead calls.

“Hi, it’s Filippo,” he said, but before he managed to add anything to that, Elia spoke up.

“Hi! How did you like the drawings?” He asked, seemingly excited to hear the answer. Filippo couldn’t help a smile forming at his lips.

“I love it, seriously. It’s amazing. Thank you so much for making it.”

“You’re welcome, I’m glad you like it. I’m not sure why Eleonora and Martino wanted so badly to have it as your birthday present, but I guess as long as you enjoy it it’s fine.”

“I’m thinking about hanging it on my wall, to be honest,” confessed Filippo, because he was, in fact, thinking about it. It’d be wasting art not to have it hanging on a wall.

“Woah, so much?”

“So much,” he nodded, even through Elia couldn’t see it. Then he decided to take the risk and try going a step further. It was his birthday, maybe he could get some birthday luck or something. “Listen… I thought maybe I could get you a coffee as a thank-you?”

“No way,” Elia said quickly, and Filippo wanted to punch himself for even asking that. _Of course._ But before he got to back off and say he was only joking or something, Elia continued. “That’s a present. You don’t need to get me anything in exchange. They asked me to do that, I had nothing better to do, I actually enjoyed doing it a lot, so I don’t need any sort of payment from you.”

“But still,” insisted Filippo, suddenly feeling brave again after those words, “I’d like to thank you in person. Don’t think about it as payment. Think about it as a… nice meeting with a receiver of your art.”

Elia’s laughter reverberated in his right ear and made him a little gooey inside. He closed his eyes to compose himself. That was interesting.

“Okay than. Let’s do that.”

When a week later Filippo was laying in his bed, Elia’s lips moving along his neck, Elia’s hand working on a zipper of his pants, Elia’s drawing hanging on his wall right above the desk, he vowed to himself he’ll never ever refuse Eleonora when she asks him to help her sorting her notes.


End file.
